


Are You Wearing My Shirt?

by stileskolpath



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek Feels, Derek Leaves Beacon Hills, Happily Ever After, M/M, Stiles Angst, Stiles Feels, Stiles-centric, sterek feels, stiles stilinski feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stileskolpath/pseuds/stileskolpath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stiles didn’t hear about it for days. He was planning on going over to the loft, working up the courage to say something to Derek that he had wanted to say for a long time when Scott had told him, and the world kind of froze for a second."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are You Wearing My Shirt?

**Author's Note:**

> So this piece of minorly angsty but mostly fluffy drabble is based on the many “derek leaving” posts floating around tumblr since yesterday. Also, I apparently cave under harassment pretty easily, just ask the always awesome Cookiesees, who wanted very specific things in this fic...
> 
> You can check out the story with all the random links on my blog at watchthewolvesrun.tumblr.com
> 
> As always, hope you enjoy. Leave kudos! Comment!
> 
> Much love,
> 
> -Stiles Kolpath

Stiles didn’t hear about it for days. He was planning on going over to the loft, working up the courage to say something to Derek that he had wanted to say for a long time when Scott had told him, and the world kind of froze for a second.

“Isaac told me he left a couple of days ago. He took Cora with him.”

Stiles wasn’t sure what to think. On one hand, it made perfect sense that the dark, brooding werewolf would do something like this without telling anyone. He wasn’t an alpha anymore. He wasn’t really tied to anything or anyone like he had been with Isaac, Erica, and Boyd. On the other, Stiles couldn’t help but feel like he was somehow to blame for it happening. He felt somehow responsible for not being able to connect the dots sooner, allowing Derek and his friends to be sucked into the shitstorm that had just gone down. The unjustified realization made his heart sink, especially considering what he had wanted to talk to Derek about. He needed to say the words, because it would get him closure, one way or the other, and maybe, just maybe, it would help Derek heal. That was all Stiles really wanted.

It was why Stiles had tried to be there for him whenever he could. The snarky comments, the constant, wayward glances, all of it Stiles’ own way of showing Derek that he had someone who cared about him. But he was probably too subtle for his own good. So when Boyd died, and he was the only one that really understood, or the only one that wasn’t worried about his own life at the moment, he had tried to show Derek that he cared. It was a simple touch, something to anchor the hurt and broken man. He had hoped that Derek felt it. Again, when they were escaping the hospital, and Derek left Stiles to guard Cora in the ambulance, his eyes a combination of fear and trust, Stiles had let his hand grab Derek’s forearm for a second. Just enough for him to pause, to feel the heartbeat slamming away in his palm, to feel what Stiles wanted to say: be careful. You have someone to care about you. Derek had probably took it to mean Cora, but Stiles was really talking about himself too.

So before Scott finished speaking, Stiles kind of ran from the room, grabbing his keys on the way out of the house. He didn’t even hear the yells of his best friend as he got into the jeep and tore off down the road towards the loft. He knew Scott would have kept him from going, but he had to see it for himself.

Stiles restrained his panic inside a healthy coat of denial-laiden armor right up until he slammed open the big steel door that opened up into the empty apartment, where it cracked, and shattered around him. The light hit him before anything else did, really. The excess grime on the big windows added an oddly soothing yellow glow to the mid-afternoon light, and under different circumstances, Stiles might have found it cozy. But all those circumstances involved Derek being there too.

But as he stepped into the empty room, the only thing he felt was its emptiness.

He didn’t have to check every part of the apartment to know that Derek was gone. But he did anyway. He yelled Derek’s name, taking care to keep his tone level at first, but he kept at it until it was choked with his own emotion. Each room, every drawer, every nook, it was all empty. The only things that were left were the hand-me-down furniture, and the ghosts. Well, and one faded, oddly-striped, blue-and-orange shirt. Stiles had found it in the bottom drawer of Derek’s dresser. It was the only thing in there.

And it just made his heart seem to tighten painfully in his chest. Because he had forgotten about the shirt, about how Derek had kept it. In a way, it was part of him, part of Stiles. And Derek had left it behind. The pain in his chest spread as heat to his face, welling up under his eyes and flushing his cheeks. He willed himself not to get emotional. After all, Derek had all the reason in the world to leave this place behind. Still, it brought tears to Stiles’ eyes, because deep down, he knew he probably would never see the scowling werewolf ever again.

He felt Scott’s hand on his shoulder before he heard him walk up. It made him start a little. But he kind of expected it.

“I’m sorry, Stiles.”

Stiles wiped his eyes. It probably only made the fact that he had been tearing up look that much more obvious to Scott.

“I’m fine.” Stiles continued to brush at his eyes as he tried to scoff in apathy. The skin became redder at the touch. And the scoff just sounded pathetic.

“You’re lying.” Damn Scott and his werewolf senses.

“Your werewolf powers must be off. I’m fine,” Stiles insisted. He tried to keep the emotion out of his voice, to no avail.

“You’re a horrible liar.” Scott’s voice was teasing, but gentle, tinged with genuine concern. Stiles hated him for trying to pull him out of his pain. He also loved him for it, but he was damned if Scott was going to make him feel happy when this whole situation hurt so much.

Stiles opened his mouth to say something, turning his head slightly, but the words got stuck. Instead, he just sort of hung his head, and stared listlessly at the shirt in his hands, thumbs absentmindedly tracing circles into the soft, well-worn cotton.

Behind him, Scott ditched the reassuring shoulder-hand-thing and opted instead for a totally lame, over-the-shoulder, best friend hug. From anyone else, it would have been awkward. He set his chin on Stiles’ shoulder, and Stiles leaned his head against Scott’s and sighed brokenly as Scott laced his arms around Stiles’ neck gently. If Scott noticed, he said nothing.

They stood like that for a long while. Scott was trying his best to take away the hurt that he knew Stiles’ felt, but it wasn’t working. He knew it, Scott knew it, and it was with this slow realization that Scott added into Stiles’ neck quietly “He needed to get away from here, it will be good for him.”

Stiles knew it was probably true. But it didn’t help, really, like at all. So he held his old shirt a little tighter to his chest, and Scott mirrored the gesture, pulling Stiles a little closer to himself. And Stiles fought in earnest to keep the tears away.

Again, he failed. He put a hand to his eyes as he felt the sob ebb upwards from his chest. He tried his best to stifle it, not wanting Scott to see it, even though Scott had seen him cry before. Stiles didn’t even realize it when Scott turned his embrace around so that he could cry into his shoulder, wrapping familiar, warm arms around him and holding him closer than anyone had in a long time.

The sobs wracked Stiles’ body, making him shudder awkwardly as he stifled their sound into Scott’s shoulder. His hands still clutched close to his chest his last wayward memento of Derek just as Scott’s held him close to his own.

“He just- I just- I just never got to tell him.” A fresh round of tears began to stream from Stiles’ clenched eyes, pooling on Scott’s shirt.

“Shhh, I know,” Scott patted his back, swaying ever so slightly. “I know.” He said the words against the side of Stiles’ neck.

Scott did know. He had known since Stiles had saved Derek at the pool. There was a look in his eyes when he looked at Derek, something that Scott had really only ever seen in Allison’s when she used to look at him. But he had never said anything. He figured that Stiles would tell him in when he was ready, in his own time. But Stiles hadn’t. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell Derek.

Stiles was trying to calm himself down, his heartbeat still skipping every other beat as it hammered awkwardly in his chest, and Scott tried to focus on it, willing it to smooth itself out.

“Do you think he will ever be back?” Stiles question was directed at Scott’s shoulder, not really in pursuit of an answer. Scott stayed quiet for a few seconds, not really knowing how to respond.

When he did, he lied, knowing that Stiles would never realize it.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

But the second he uttered it, Stiles’ heart started shuddering again. He knew.

—

Stiles knew he really didn’t have a reason to still be as upset about it as he was, all things considered. Unrequited love sucks, yes, but eventually he should have moved on. But he didn’t. It kept bothering him, gnawing away under the surface, a constant pressure, pushing against the back of his mind, something tightening slowly around his chest, shortening each breath by the smallest of fractions with each exhale. Scott had been understanding at first, sure. But that was his duty as his best friend. But as the days became weeks, Stiles got the feeling that Scott was just pitying him.

The funny thing was, Stiles really couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t answer that burning question that he could read on his best friend’s face each time he looked at Stiles. Why do you care? He just did. He just held onto the hope that Derek would be back someday, and he quietly prayed that it would still be the same Derek that had packed up and left with Cora in the first place. He knew it was probably selfish, to still want to tell him how he felt, but he also knew that it would probably not help anyone.

Stiles found himself spending more and more time at the empty loft. At first, he couldn’t really bring himself to go past the first few steps, he always ended up sitting on one, looking into the nearly-empty expansive room with unfocused eyes, remembering that time when Derek’s pack was huddled over the big table, poring over the floorplan of the bank, the night that they found Boyd and Cora. Derek had given him a funny look when he had said something about going with him and Scott. It was three parts exasperation, one part something else that Stiles hadn’t been able to identify at the time. It had bugged him for a few days after. He really wanted to ask Derek about it, but each time the thought crossed his mind, and he was about to utter the words, he thought better of it, dismissed the idea, and set about trying to busy himself with something else.

He also remembered the night that Boyd died. How Derek had looked, confused and scared, soaked with water and staring at his claws in disbelief and resignation. Stiles had been struck by how alone the alpha was, with nobody trying to comfort him; not his sister, not Isaac, not Jennifer (who Stiles had always known was not what she seemed, by the way), no one. No one had come to Derek’s aid. So Stiles did the best he could. Because the look of pain on Derek’s face was too much to take. It was a simple gesture, but Stiles was trying to do his best to ease the hurt caused by whatever was coursing through the werewolf’s mind at the time. The sympathetic hand he laid on Derek’s shoulder had been meant to convey that he cared, that Derek wasn’t alone.That was all he could do, but it never seemed like it was enough.

Eventually, Stiles brought himself to venture further into the loft and the memories it carried. He started to sit on the couch to watch tv, or read and do homework at the table, occasionally staring through the grime on the windows out onto the old deserted factory district of Beacon Hills to distract himself. He would bring over food and eat in the echoing silence, or pace around the walls of the apartment quietly at night, wearing the old shirt Derek had left. He always felt like he had to be quiet at night. It always felt like Derek was sleeping in the next room.

Stiles hoped that wherever Derek was sleeping, it was peaceful. Even if he couldn’t be there to share that peace with him. It was the only thought that seemed to warm Stiles’ mind in the darkness.

But as the weeks turned into months, even that thought’s light began to flicker and dwindle. Even Derek’s smell on his old t-shirt began to fade. The scent that had once been clear and sharp took more than a deep inhale to even sense now. And when it reached his nose, the usual deep, dark, woodsy smell of Derek was drowned out by the placid odor of worn cotton. Stiles was pretty much not leaving the loft at this point, just sitting on the bed and running the garment through his fingers absentmindedly, his eyes unfocused and glassy, staring at the floor as his mind wandered.

Invariably all thoughts turned to Derek. And with those thoughts came pain. He wondered where the werewolf was, what he was doing, and if he was thinking about him at all. Probably not. It made Stiles sick. So he would curl up in Derek’s bed, and try to sleep, for all the good it did him.

—

Just as the darkness was beginning to close in around him, and he felt that all hope was lost, Stiles woke up one morning in the loft to hear noise coming from the kitchen. Expecting Scott, or Isaac, or Allison, invariably sent to water and pity him, he wrapped himself in Derek’s comforter and strode sleepily in the direction of the noise.

He turned the corner into the room, and was rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Guys, go away, I am perfectly capable of—” Stiles words caught in his throat as Derek stood up from leaning into the refrigerator, where he had been putting away groceries. The look on his face was not surprised, or angry, or even scowling. It was relaxed. Calm. Knowing. Almost… understanding. Stiles blinked three times as he stood there, dumbfounded. Then he walked right up to the leather-jacket clad werewolf, and punched him square in the jaw.

—

Of course, since Derek was a werewolf, and a pretty seasoned one at that, the crunching sound that was made when Stiles’ fist made contact came from Stiles’ hand, rather than Derek’s jaw. The human immediately flailed awkwardly, clutched at his hand, sinking to his knees and began yelling a fairly angry stream of curses at his hand, at Derek’s face, and at the world in general. Derek absentmindedly rubbed his jaw with one hand and turned around to pull a frozen bag of peas from the freezer that were still solid from the supermarket.

Derek met Stiles on the ground, quickly shoving the impromptu ice pack around the back of Stiles’ knuckles with one hand, wrapping another around the back of his neck fondly,

Stiles was trying desperately not to cry at the pain. His mind was half screaming in agony and he was muttering angry curses under his breath, eyes wild with something he hadn’t felt since that goddamn bus ride with Finstock.

Derek met his gaze with seafoam green-and-gold-flecked eyes, and sighed. His grip on Stiles’ neck tightened slightly, and Stiles caught the briefest glimpse of black veins on his forearm as the pain abated.

“I guess I deserved that.” The words stopped Stiles’ angry thoughts in their tracks, for a second.

“You really did.”

Derek chuckled. “I never thought I would come back to you like this.”

“I never thought you would come back at all. Looks like we were both disappointed.” Derek removed his hand, a hurt look crossing his face. The pain began to flow back from Stiles’ hand.

“Big talk coming from the guy who was sleeping in my bed.” He eyed the comforter that Stiles had unceremoniously dumped onto the floor in a tangled mass as he said it. Then his gaze flicked back to Stiles, looking down at— fuck.

“…And wearing my shirt.”

“You left it here. Clearly you didn’t want it.”

“That’s not why I left it.”

“Oh, really? Why, then? Why did you leave it behind? Because you have to have some kind of good reason for picking up and hauling ass without even so much as a ‘so long, fuck you’.”

Derek sighed, clenching his jaw in a way that Stiles did not find at all endearing.

“I needed to get away for a while. I needed to find something to give me a reason to come back.”

“Oh, and you found that, did you? Where, three thousand miles away from here?”

Derek’s brow furrowed into its familiar scowl. Stiles hated himself for missing it as much as he did. “Why are you so upset? I came back, didn’t I? Isn’t that what matters?”

“No- Yes, but-” Stiles sighed exasperatedly. He turned his amber-brown eyes to the ceiling, as if calling upon some higher power to grant him the strength to not brain Derek again. Derek was still holding the quickly-condensing pack of ice to his hand, so Stiles used the other to rub his eyes with his thumb and forefinger as he leveled them back out. “I’m upset because you left, you didn’t say anything to anyone, and I know that you were trying to ‘find yourself’ or whatever, that it was supposed to be good for you, blah, blah, blah, but-”

“Stiles?”

“-I’m not done.” Derek closed his mouth and looked fondly at the human as he continued, unperturbed. “Then you just show back up, unannounced, with that stupid almost-normal-looking expression, and I can’t even- I just wanted to tell you- ughhhhh.” Stiles facepalmed and shook his head.

“Stiles?”

“What, Derek, what?” Stiles’ frustration was evident in his voice, and his heart was beating a mile a minute. He looked at Derek with condescending expectancy.

“Do you want to know what my reason was?”

“Your reason for what?” Stiles shrugged.

“For coming back.”

“Fine. What was it then?” In answer, Derek slid the hand he had been keeping on Stiles’ neck up to his face, lightly stroking the pale skin of the human’s cheek.

“It was you.” Derek’s eyes betrayed the affection behind them. Stiles’ heart skipped a beat. Whatever anger he felt for Derek was washed instantly away.

“But how did you- why- I don’t-” Stiles floundered.

Derek cut him off, closing the remaining space between them and pressing his lips to Stiles’. After Stiles’ nerves stopped misfiring gloriously at the contact, and their mouths slotted together, something passed from Derek into Stiles as they shared their breath. Flashes of memories, the same ones that had weighed on Stiles’ mind since Derek had left. The lingering looks the night they found Cora, the reassuring touch after Kali killed Boyd, the quick moment of tactile understanding shared at the hospital, but from Derek’s perspective. He had known. He had felt it. Other memories flashed across his mind’s eye, of him supporting Derek in the pool, of being paralyzed beneath him by Matt, of that first look they shared in the woods after Scott was bitten. Underlying all of them was an overwhelming urge, a feeling that Stiles recognized, because he felt it himself.

Love.

Stiles pulled back, his heart slamming away in his chest as the connection severed. His breathing was ragged, and so was Derek’s. Their eyes met. Stiles settled his forehead against the werewolf’s, savoring the ghost of his lips on his own.

They sat there for a long, quiet moment on the kitchen floor, recovering.

“Derek?”

“Yeah?”

“I missed you.” It was all Stiles could get out coherently.

Derek closed his eyes briefly at the words, as if they gave him some kind of relief. “I know,” he smiled at the human. “I missed you too.”

Stiles hadn’t seen that look in a long time. It made him mirror the expression reflexively.

He would never have to miss Derek again.

But he would need to get to a hospital, because he thought his hand was broken.

It wasn’t, but Derek took him anyway.

—Epilogue—

Years passed. Stiles went to college, and Derek went with him. They shared a small apartment nearby the school where they spent most of their time. Derek still technically lived in Beacon Hills, but he spent less time at the loft than he did at their small dwelling, despite not being in school with Stiles. Once a week, he would go back to pick up clothes, or make sure the Sheriff was eating healthy, and check on Isaac, who was still living with Scott’s mom. When he would come back, Stiles would usually have made some dinner, and baked a few batches of chocolate chip cookies for dessert, and wouldn’t let him leave his side all night, as if he expected Derek to run off at any moment. Derek didn’t eat many of them, but he loved sitting on the couch on Friday nights and watching movies with Stiles while he gorged himself, trying to analyze what was on the screen with an absurdly large mouthful of cookie always made Derek laugh.

—

When Stiles graduated and they moved back to Beacon Hills, the tradition continued at the loft. The once-empty and cavernous space became filled with the sounds of their constant, insanely fast couple-y talking after each day of work, of Stiles’ high, clear laughter when Derek would accidentally wolf-out at the toaster, and of Derek’s low, lustful growling when he and Stiles were alone. The pack came and went as they pleased, and there was never a point where at least one of them wasn’t staying the night there.

—

On the way home one night, Stiles found two wolf pups on the side of the highway, their mother killed by a passing truck. With the help of Scott and Deaton, he nursed them back to health, and Derek found that he had a new animal to contend with in the loft. One that wouldn’t leave Stiles’ side and growled at Derek at every chance she got. Stiles would always laugh at Derek for it. The other pup, Isaac took to train as guard dog. He still lived with Scott’s mom, and took care of the house for her and Stiles’ dad when they worked their customary long hours.

—

Somehow Stiles and Derek had managed to carve out a peaceful life together, despite all the odds. And one year for their anniversary, Stiles presented Derek with a small, flat box. Derek opened it and found the worn striped shirt he had left behind all those years ago when he had left, wrapped in tissue paper. The tag read “Happy anniversary Miguel. Here’s to never having to say goodbye to you again.” And they didn’t, for the rest of their days.


End file.
